Apple Opens A Front In The CRAPWARE Wars

One of the topics that gets my ranting engine revved up is CRAPWARE. You know, software demos and other programs that come preinstalled on a new Tablet PC (or any computer for that matter) that cause many a new user to wade through countless pop-up options when they first boot up a new computer, and often clog up the works once you’ve managed to get things started. The problem is ubiquitous on Windows machines, and of course that extends to Tablet PCs. (Although Electrovaya seems to have avoided the temptation, kudos to them.) Of course OEMs rationalize that the bundling of CRAPWARE helps to keep the costs down and that makes some sense. That argument is met with those who are so offended by the problem that they have offered to pay more to have a clean booting system on startup. Jason at yorkspace.com created a script he called the Dell DeCrapifer. Smelling money, Dell recently offered an option on select systems to have a CRAPWARE free system. Of course they don’t use the term.

When you consider the core principles behind the WEB 2.0 bubble/bandwagon, you somewhat have to accept that our future will contain not only CRAPWARE installed on hardware, but also more ubiquitous advertising on web apps and perhaps on client apps as well, (This document brought to you by fill in the blank) so to many ranting about CRAPWARE seems like tilting at windmills. Or is it?

Well, Apple’s latest round of very clever, but not always accurate, commercials stake out a little new turf in the Out Of Box Experience (OOBE) commercial. I’m surprised they haven’t brought focus to this issue before, but I’m glad they are doing so now.

Here’s hoping it brings a little more focus on the issue. In the meantime, I’ll keep my eye out for WINTEL CRAPWARE victories, small thougt they may be.